The origin story.
When Curriculus was first developed, we designed it around the consumer space, where anyone could go deep on whatever topic they could dream of (for me, that was building a structured curriculum around improvising electric guitar on top of melodic tech house). And while I thoroughly enjoyed what I was reading (and learning), I noticed my wife, a professor, slogging away on her own course development - night after night, and summer day after summer day. I noticed where her energy was drained and where she was having fun. It turns out that so much of what I had built for myself had direct applications to changing her world. So, over the next three months, we adapted the original platform to focus on augmenting her expertise rather than building everything from scratch. After four rewrites and overhauls of the platform, that’s when I started hearing something different from her. “Holy &@*!, this is amazing”. And now, three months after that comment, we’re at a point where Curriculus is making a big change in how instructors and course designers do their work.
So, what’s different with Curriculus?
Course development includes different kinds of work: choosing what matters, planning how students will learn it, and checking how the materials connect. Our aim is to help with the planning and lesson drafts so instructors can spend their review time shaping the teaching. That still takes judgment, preparation and feedback; it does not remove the instructor’s work.
Why are instructional design and course design hard?
Building a course can compete with teaching, research and other responsibilities. New readings may require changes to discussion questions or assessments. A different student audience may need more practice with the foundations. The amount of work depends on the course, the existing materials and the changes the instructor wants.
Course development and instructional design require coordination.
Every change you make in a course has a ripple effect. Update the reading for Week 7? Now you’re tweaking that week’s discussion questions, fixing Week 8’s recap (because it referenced outdated material), reworking Week 9’s scaffolding, and likely rewriting assessment questions as well.
The K. Patricia Cross Academy’s guide to backward design shows that balancing institutional standards, departmental expectations, diverse learning needs, and accurate assessment requires thoughtful integration of content knowledge, pedagogical strategies, and assessment methods. Each component affects the others, creating a web of dependencies that can require reviewing several related materials.
A changing development reality
It helps to distinguish course organization from the academic choices that depend on instructor expertise. Curriculus develops the course plan and lesson guides, while you confirm the direction, review the drafts and guide revisions.
We connect the assigned readings to the lesson work and plan the progression toward the abilities you confirm. For a requested change, we review which related materials need revision.
What it costs
We publish our prices. On Pricing you can compare the price and faculty time for a Curriculus course with a university design team and with faculty building the course themselves.
Compare the cost and faculty time
So, what if there was a better way to handle all this?
We begin by discussing your starting point, then agree on the scope and price before development. The sequence below describes the work; it is not a fixed day-by-day delivery schedule.
Here’s how the process works out:
- Confirm the starting point. Share your students’ needs, teaching goals and requirements. Before lesson development, provide the approved readings in digital form.
- Review the course plan. Confirm the goals, sequence and learning areas. Decide which parts of an existing course to retain.
- Shape the lesson drafts. Read the explanations, discussion prompts and practice. Tell us where students need a fuller explanation or a different emphasis.
- Review the agreed materials. We develop the remaining lesson guides within scope. The Complete course package also includes assessments and teaching decks developed from the lesson work.
Your original scope includes two consolidated revision rounds. We quote later updates and changes to approved inputs separately. Review the packages, prices and scope terms before deciding what to develop.
Quality through systematic design
Checking a course means looking across the readings, objectives, lesson sequence and assessment approach. Those checks support the instructor’s review of what to teach, how deeply to teach it and what students should practice.
As you review a course, useful questions include:
- Do students have the preparation they need for each lesson?
- Can you trace the lesson ideas to the assigned readings?
- Do the assessments address what students studied and practiced?
- Do the explanations use consistent terms across the course?
- Which related materials need review when an input changes?
You bring the judgment about your students, teaching approach and course goals. We develop and revise the agreed materials with your feedback.
About Curriculus
Curriculus develops course plans and lesson guides grounded in your readings and shaped around how you teach. See how we work together.
